On behalf of the National Whistleblower Center ("Center")
and the individuals and organizations listed below, I want to thank you
for planning hearings that concern whistleblowing at the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency ("EPA"). As a current 27 year veteran of EPA, and as
an employee who has been active in whistleblower-related activities since
the late 1970's, I have witnessed the tremendous problems caused by EPA's
institutional failure to protect whistleblowers or take action to ensure
that the "employee protection" provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act,
the Clean Air Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, the Superfund law, the
Clean Water Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act are followed. The
EPA cannot properly protect the environment unless all persons covered
by these laws, including contractors and employees of the EPA, are fully
protected when expressing their concerns about potential violations of
law, poor scientific practices, regulatory deficiencies and other problems
that could negatively impact public health and the environment.

The protection of environmental whistleblowers at EPA
must begin within the highest levels of the administration. Unfortunately,
based both on my personal experience, the experiences documented by the
National Whistleblower Center and the undisputed public record, the EPA
has institutionally, over a significant period of time, violated the environmental
whistleblower statutes at every level. The U.S. Department of Labor has
issued numerous findings documenting these violations, including the wrongful
discharge, badmouthing and harassment of senior scientists merely for raising
scientific issues that may be in contrast to the regulatory positions taken
by the agency. Persons involved in these violations have included assistant
administrators, officials within the Office of General Counsel and the
Office of the Inspector General, and heads of other important offices.
The highest ranking officers of the EPA have had knowledge of these violations
for years and they have repeatedly failed to discipline officials who have
illegally harassed whistleblowers or take any action to prevent further
violations. This has sent a chilling effect throughout the agency. A review
of the published decisions of the U.S. Department of Labor demonstrates
that the EPA itself is the single largest violator of the environmental
whistleblower laws in the United States.

It is inexcusable that the EPA, instead of providing an
example for open scientific discussion, has continuously violated key environmental
legislation. I have written to EPA management seeking internal reform,
but without success. Consequently, I urge this Committee, in a bipartisan
manner, to take the strongest possible steps to mandate that EPA stop violating
the whistleblower laws and institute affirmative measures ensuring that
whistleblower laws are respected.

Most of the steps that EPA should take in order to reverse
the cycle of retaliation are very simple. At a minimum, we urge that this
Committee insist that the agency undertake the following steps to protect
whistleblowers:

1. POSTING NOTICE OF THE LAW

The EPA has failed to inform employees of their legal
rights under the environmental laws with whistleblower provisions, and
has taken no action to protect employees who have engaged in conduct protected
under these laws. As a result, most EPA employees and managers are unaware
of the statutory remedies available to whistleblowers. As a first step,
managers and those they supervise should be made aware of their rights
to "blow the whistle" should they believe public health or the environment
is put at risk by the actions of their employer. Therefore, there should
a mandatory posting requirement for all employers covered under the six
environmental statutes with whistleblower provisions cited earlier.

2. MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING

The indifference, if not outright hostility, which EPA
officials have demonstrated toward employee protection provisions is perhaps
most noticeable in the failure to execute a Memorandum of Understanding
with the Department of Labor (the agency that adjudicates labor-related
aspects of whistleblower cases). Consequently, EPA has yet to develop any
mechanism whereby appropriate officials in the agency are notified of concerns
its employees have raised with the Department of Labor ("DOL"). The U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission ("NRC"), concerned with parts of the Atomic
Energy Act modeled after whistleblower provisions in the Clean Air Act,
implemented such an instrument over fifteen years ago.

3. TRAINING WITHIN THE EPA

As noted above, the EPA has failed to properly inform
its own employees of their legal rights under environmental whistleblower
laws. As a result, most persons in a position to advise employees of their
rights, or prevent illegal retaliation, are unaware of these legal protections.
Depositions conducted in a number of high-profile EPA whistleblower cases
demonstrated that employees at all levels within the EPA - from assistant
administrators to agency ethics officials to criminal investigators for
the Inspector General's office, are unfamiliar with whistleblower provisions
of environmental laws. Even the Administrator's former Chief of Staff was
not aware of protections offered EPA whistleblowers, according to a 1996
deposition. EPA, therefore, should institute an agency-wide training program
regarding legal protections afforded to whistleblowers under environmental
statutes.

4. REFORM WITHIN THE OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL

The EPA Office of Inspector General ("OIG") has responsibility
for monitoring EPA employees with regard to obeying, the law. Not only
has the OIG failed to recommend discipline for any of the managers found
guilty of illegally retaliating against whistleblowers, it has targeted
whistleblowers with retaliatory investigations and engaged in coverups
of illegal actions against whistleblowers. In one case that gained national
publicity, the OIG conducted a four-year investigation of an EPA Senior
Science Advisor for publicly disagreeing with the agency's position. When
a DOL case was filed for determining whether EPA's conduct in this matter
violated whistleblower provisions of environmental laws, the OIG - in violation
of federal laws and its own regulations concerning the Freedom of Information
Act ("FOIA") documents - shredded hundreds of pages of relevant (and requested)
documentation. Although the EPA stipulated that the shredding occurred
in violation of the FOIA, no action was taken against officials who approved
or conducted the shredding. Moreover, the special agent who shredded the
material was soon promoted to a supervisory position.1The
Inspector General has also issued agency wide warnings which misinformed
employees of their rights. Because of their past offenses and neglect of
duty in this area, the OIG office should be restructured in such a manner
as to ensure that whistleblowers are no longer targeted by retaliatory
investigations. This could be done by establishing an independent office
within the EPA to properly review whistleblower allegations of retaliation.

5. FORMULATION OF AN APPROPRIATE SAFETY NET

Congress, with overwhelming bipartisan majorities, passed
seven environmental and nuclear safety laws. Six of the laws cover substantive
areas regulated by the EPA and one, the employee protection provision of
the Atomic Energy Act, covers substantive areas regulated by the NRC. The
NRC is to be commended for instituting a broad program aimed at providing
an appropriate administrative safety net for protecting whistleblowers.
The EPA, which has hitherto taken no action to enforce or implement these
legally guaranteed protections, should be required to put forth a similar
level of effort.

Respectfully submitted,

William Sanjour2
National Advisory Board
National Whistleblower Center

SUBMITTED ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL WHISTLEBLOWER CENTER
AND ENDORSED BY THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS AND PERSONS:

GREENPEACE

Lois Marie Gibbs
CENTER FOR HEALTH, ENVIRONMENT & JUSTICE

Beverly Wright, Ph D
DEEP SOUTH CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Peter Montague, Ph D
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION

Terri Swearingen
TRI-STATE ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL

Phyllis Glazer
MOTHERS ORGANIZED TO STOP ENVIRONMENTAL SINS

Sanford Lewis
GOOD NEIGHBOR PROJECT

David Ozonoff, MD, MPH*
Professor and Chair, Dept. of Environmental HealthBoston University
School of Public Health

1. The scientist in this case eventually won his whistleblower
claim and was ordered reinstated, with back pay and damages, by Secretary
of Labor Robert Reich.

2. In addition to serving, without pay, on the National
Whistleblower Center's Advisory Board, William Sanjour has worked in various
EPA offices for 27 years. He is currently a policy analyst in the Technology
Innovation Office. Before blowing the whistle, Mr. Sanjour was a branch
chief in the Office of Solid Waste with responsibilities for drafting hazardous
waste regulations. He was the victorious plaintiff in the landmark First
Amendment lawsuit Sanjour v. EPA, 56 F.3d 85 (D.C. Cir. 1995)(en
banc), on remand, 7 F. Supp.2d 14 (D.D.C. 1998), in which he obtained
a nation-wide injunction against the EPA for issuing an "ethics" opinion
which violated the constitutional rights of EPA employee-whistleblowers.
His whistleblowing activities are documented on the Web at http://pwp.lincs.net/sanjour.
In compliance with EPA ethics requirements, the opinions expressed in this
letter do not reflect the position of the EPA.